In high-end audioor any other business for that mattera decade can be
a long time. Cary Audio Design achieved that milestone a while back. Dennis Had and his
wife Donna founded the company in 1989. Now Cary Audio is starting to celebrate milestone
birthdays of their noted productsthe renowned CAD805 monoblock amplifiers turned ten
this year, and in their honor Dennis Had brought out a special Anniversary Edition of that
great music maker. Time flies when youre having funHad is every inch as
passionate about audio design today as when he was a kid. He was a seventh grader when he
designed his first single-ended audio amp as a science project. He won a blue ribbon for
that effort, and returned to that initial love years later with the founding of Cary Audio
Design. You are what you design! Dennis Had and Cary Audio have attracted much attention
and many loyal customers in the years since, for their no-compromise, take-no-prisoners
attitude towards amplifier design, particularly his single-ended designs, several of which
feature the tube audiophiles either love or love to hate, the 300B.

I caught up with Dennis Had, along with his business partner Bill Wright, in the
Cary Audio suite at the Alexis Park during the 2003 Consumer Electronics Show. It has been
a big year for Cary Audio, highlighted by their move to bigger and better manufacturing
quarters in North Carolina. As I spoke with Dennis, I could hear beautiful music being
played in the next room by a Cary CD player through his new Cary speaker design, the
Silver Oak Loudspeaker, driven by gorgeous looking (and sounding) CAD805 Anniversary
Edition monoblocks.

Dennis and Bill at 2003 CES

Sasha Matson: What is your view of the proper relationship
between the appreciation of recorded music and the live concert musical experience? Do you
view them as two separate worlds?

Dennis Had: I think if we are realistic, they probably are very
much two separate worlds, and I say that from the standpoint of interfacing with our
customers. Probably a majority of those customers do not attend live concerts, other than
rock concerts. Symphonic presentation is an offering for maybe twenty percent of our
customers. These are the true high-end buyersthe people that really will go to any
length to replicate that emotional experience. They are the most passionate, without
regard for the equipment costs. Then you have the people that really love jammin
with music, who make up a major portion, and those people are more cosmetically intrigued
and more inclined to tweak, to put different power cords on. That is their form of the
ritual, whereas the concertgoer knows that real music is the ritual, and they want to come
home and continually feed that emotion. Then youve got the people that have no
concept, except that its bigger and louder.

SM: Franco Serblin of Sonus Faber was recently quoted as saying:
"You might have a more intense emotional experience with a recording than with a live
performance."What is your take on that?

DH: That could be possible from the standpoint of your environment. Some people
might be far more relaxed and allow themselves to delve into the music. Personally I find
that difficult to comprehend when I attend the symphony. I can be out on the street and a
fellow opens up his guitar case and starts to play, and I stop and listen. I was raised
with it. My father was a violinist, and music was to be played as the composer intended
it.

SM: Does the current younger generation value music in the same
way?

DH: I think music today, or what is in vogue, is somewhat
surrounded with high-tech and machinery.

SM: Just go over to the Convention Center (laughter)! Is the
internet going to be a medium for high quality audio?

DH: In the future there will be a form of downloading music that
is legitimate and ethical, and there will be advances in bandwidth.

SM: As a designer, how do you view the interface between the
physics, the hardware and software, and the ethereal art of music?

DH: It truly is an art form. As you design a circuit there are
proper protocols of engineering, there are rules that you must follow for ethical
engineering. There are circuit changes that will respond to the personal designers
ear, still staying within proper engineering form. But it is an absolute creative
passionthats me youre talking to.

SM: Thats who I'm talking to (laughter)! Youve now
designed and brought to the public a number of fine audio products. Do you love all your
children equally?

DH: There are always some of your first-born. One of them of
course is the 805.

SM: Even as you introduce new products, are there some you would
like to keep in production?

DH: Sure, one of them would be the 805, which is celebrating its
tenth anniversary. That is a product that were known for. There are products in the
past that I thought would be absolutely cool, but they were too low power. At this point
there is a trio of products we would like to maintain: the CAD805, the 300SEI (that all my
children own), and the 300SEs.

SM: In the era of home theater, is it now necessary for
musicians and people in the high end to think like filmmakers?

DH: The surround-sound video experience is driven by the video,
by the film. In my opinion, the multiple-channel loudspeaker setup is flawed for music. I
believe that a two-channel system done properly is far more realistic, and will convey far
more of the emotion. With the proliferation of that market, and the type of equipment that
goes along with it, care and passionate designing are absolutely secondary. With film and
video, the audio becomes a fill-in. If the screen were blank, there would be no reason to
listen to that stuff.

When I use the term "secondary," that is something about which we
learned a hard lesson. A number of years ago, I designed a broadcast-quality multi-channel
amplifier. It was part of my naiveté. I made an assumption, which was incorrect, that
this was a product that we could take to the pro-sound world for commercial theater
applications. The unit weighted 190 pounds and was absolutely bulletproof; it was my
presentation of how music should sound. We made a presentation to a group of executives in
Las Vegas a few years ago. The amplifier, to meet our margins, was a seven-thousand-dollar
device. We were invited to come, and graciously invited to leave the room when we found
out they didnt want seven-thousand-dollar amplifiersthey wanted seven-hundred
dollar amplifiers. In the cinemas that we are going to, youre listening to the least
expensive they can get away with.

SM: Having now tackled the design of digital components, are you
still a believer in tube technology?

DH: The CD308T was great fun because the sonic presentation
could be molded and finessed, to my ears, in the software realm. Im not a digital
engineer, so the way it was done was I drove the digital team crazy. It afforded me the
opportunity to shape that player in this mystic digital realm to my ears and desires, and
then add the sweetener of the vacuum tubes.

SM: Your initial line of CD players included tubed outputs, but
currently the CD308T is the only one that does. Have your customers been asking for them?

DH: They have been. There has been some disappointment with our
CD players with our hardcore tube customers. The CD308T was an immediate success. The
reality is that we have many dealers throughout the world that have no concept, or any
desire, to have products that include vacuum tubes, which are "old technology."
They are not able to comprehend them. So, it afforded us a new venue to not have the
vacuum tubes.

SM: Extrapolating this out, Dennis, what are your current
thoughts on the digital/analog divide? Have you been able to achieve parity with fine
vinyl playback with your current lineup of CD players, or is that even a goal?

DH: You know, at first it was, years ago when I was tearing
apart players. The analog playback system will have its own distinct sound. I grew up with
a record player as soon as I could put a record on. That is what I'm attuned to. I equate
electronic playback of music with a record player.

SM: Do you listen to a lot of vinyl at home?

DH: I would say my CD player has a lot of dust on it (laughter).

SM: Mums the word!

DH: The reality is that the CD is what we find music on, but I
have come to the conclusion that we are just chasing our tails.

SM: But it's getting darn better, under your leadership and
others.

DH: That's true. You take the average layman off the street, and
it is not subtlethey can hear the difference between a first-generation CD player
and what we've achieved.

SM: Given the complex nature of digital sub-components, how have
you tried to achieve a creative approach in your digital designs?

DH: I have creative control, at this point, in the software
realm. I have my software guru. The filtering, the algorithmsthey can be shaped.

SM: Do you do empirical testing and listening?

DH: That is correct. Then my responses: "I need a greater
soundstage, I need more foundation, I need depth of field, the last software didnt
get me those."

SM: Do you find the nature of digital components frustrating?

DH: No, and the reason is that I have my other realm of products
that I can be tweaking. It's something of a luxury that I can speak in terms of my
desires, and then the software people can do their thing.

SM: What are your thoughts at this point on SACD and DVD Audio?

DH: When I formed Cary Audio it was an absolute statement. From
a business standpoint as well, to just follow the crowd is the most difficult.

SM: Low wattage and 300B tubes?

DH: It afforded us attention. We were set apart.

SM: Having pioneered very high-quality, single-ended,
low-output-power amplifiers, do you think the term "watts" has any real meaning
today for the high end user?

DH: We can go back to that figure of maybe 20 per cent of our
customers, who want to invoke the original emotion of the performance. For them, wattage
has no bearing; it's all in the sonic presentation. The most wattage-conscious customer is
one that has no clue what music is.

SM: Every one of those watts is a good watt!

DH: Its just part of the American culture. There was a
one-cylinder engine in Henry Fords first automobile, and Cadillac announced the V16
the other day at the Detroit showone thousand horsepower! It just follows the
society.

SM: Your comments on the mysteries of
"upsampling"when does it work, and when doesn't it work so well?

DH: On some of the earlier digital recordings, there was RF and
sub-induced noise above the 23kHz subsonic brickwall filter. On our players, when you have
them upsampling at 192kHz, you've got an opening window up to about 88 kHz, so there are
some occasions when you will hear some nasty stuff. It is showing the original A to D
conversion. It is a matter of personal preference. In reality, we're still dealing with an
initial disk at 44kHz. In general, there is greater width, more detail.

SM: What is most rewarding, and most frustrating, in the current
consumer business environment?

DH: The most frustrating is the lack of passionate retailers.
The mentality in the past few years has become that retailers just want to move boxes.

SM: Do you seek dealers out, or do they come to you?

DH: They come to us. We have felt that if we can sell the final
user, then the user will go to a dealer and request it, and that will bring the dealer to
us. There are so many dealers that lose track of the fact that this is a specialty market.
The Best Buysthats a whole different business model, and the mentality of many
of those specialized dealers is that they want to emulate a Best Buy or whatever. I think
that is harming them, and its a frustration to me personally.

SM: Why do people listen to music? What floats your boat
aesthetically?

DH: Theres a ritual, and this is the beauty of vinyl. If
one isnt playing the instrument and youre not at the live venue, then there
was a ritual with the turntable. You cleaned the record, you put it on the cleaning
machine, cleaned the stylus. And of course, part of the ritual that I like is the glowing
vacuum tubes. With the CD, aside from the green pens, theres not a lot of ritual. To
this day I have a passion for used bookstores that carry records. People talk about
scratching and hissingI dont hear it.

SM: What are your reference recordings?

DH: I have a few that my father did, metal pressings and
shellac, which were done in our living room. I can never get enough of Rachmaninoff.
Grieg's Piano Concerto in A MinorI will seek out every performance, and the chance
is that the latest performance becomes my favorite for a while, because I'm feeling new
emotion. The RCA Living Stereos, I have maybe 500 of the originals. I enjoy jazz.

SM: What do you think of high end journalism? Do you think it
has an educational role to play?

DH: For better or worse, the education process, in my opinion,
should come from the dealer. The local dealer should be spreading the gospel and creating
the passion. In the "golden day" of hi-fi, that's where the passion was spread,
by the dealer in the community. Now the reviewer is in that position.

SM: Cary Audio has recently moved to bigger and better quarters.
I assume this reflects some optimism on your part and Cary's place within the high end?

DH: Absolutely. We've been blessed; the market has been very
good to us. We did in fact, nine months ago, buy an acre of dirt in an industrial park,
and built a new home.

SM: In the high end, the dialectic between art and business
seems particularly intense. Do you see this as productive and energizing, or is there a
downside?

DH: The passionate, art side of it, the creativity and design,
would be to no avail if it was not put forth in a business plan to take it out into the
marketplace. Part of my passion is driven by acceptance in the marketplace, which in turn
equates to income.

SM: Right. Long may you reign!

DH: Put it this way. You take a trip to Niagara Falls, and the
emotional impact of the fallsyour mind is ablaze. So you take your latest high-tech
camera and take a picture and then bring it back to your home, blow it up seven by eight
feet and put it on the wall. You can reflect upon and look at that picture and receive
some of the emotional impact, but it will never ever come close to being there at Niagara
Falls.